How can we improve the OneDrive experience on Windows?

Reassess the possibility to ignore or exclude selected OneDrive folders and files from the sync process.

It would be great to be able to ignore or exclude selected files and folders within the OneDrive folder from syncing. It has been requested a few times before and solves user problems in a variety of areas: from software developers having problems with temporary build files and node_modules folders, through users who want to ignore sync problems (or issues like waiting days for a file to upload on a slow connection) by ignoring files in sync, to users who want to ignore files and folders created by applications, especially photo applications. There are many use cases where this feature would be a solution.

It might also be the case that a feature would reduce the number of support requests and user dissatisfaction, since users would have a way to fix various issues themselves (there is probably more applicable scenarios than described above) by desyncing a file or folder causing problems.

I know this feature has been requested before, and has received the status 'not right now', therefore I have termed this request 'reassess', to determine if the 'not right now' status is still the state of this feature request. I have collected the IDs of the uservoice requests for which this feature would be a solution (listed at the end of the request), summing the votes on these requests, this feature has a total of 549 votes, which would place at about the 35th position, among other requests which have status of 'working on it' or 'thinking about it'.

Thanks for your consideration!

The IDs of the related uservoice issues are: 6988070,10720758,10932591,10778649,10954851,11301837,11344905,11654178,13452462,15748891,17236724,8026992,15017205,17169314,18429295,7290507,11625105,12915153,13541754,16044514,7927728

In the online OneDrive Admin portal (admin.onedrive.com), under the Sync tab, there is an option to "Block syncing of certain file types", which allows you to list file extensions that should not be synced. This sounded really good because I'm a developer, and Visual Studio creates megabytes of temporary files. I entered the extensions of these files in the box, expecting them to be ignored by OneDrive. Instead, the result was that the files were flagged as sync issues and syncing stopped. Please change the behavior of OneDrive so it just ignores these files and acts as if they didn't exist. For extra credit, you could put a symbol beside them to identify them as ignored.

How is this not an option? I don't want to have to mess with the default cache folder for every app (Adobe, Pro Tools, et al) yet I don't need those huge files synced. Why is this still an issue in the year 2020? I'm furious.

Please make this a thing. Currently, this ends up being a copy of the core of our drives, which is where a ton of programs plant there stuff. So many unnecessary files end up here, and it becomes a jumbled mess. And with many of them, due to the nature or quirks of the program, we can't just "move them outside" the OneDrive directory. Give us the power to exclude/choose the specific files we sync to OneDrive.

This needs to be implemented ASAP or I will end up having to move away from One Drive. There are too many apps that use a folder under Documents as a cache type location that just break the whole thing. Maybe they shouldn't be doing that but they are. This is super urgent!

This has been an end-user request since at least 2015 with comments explaining the exact need. This is no way to treat customers in 2020. Stop resting on your laurels as being the oldest, and therefore most used, operating system, and start competing like you care.

This is such a waste of bandwidth for people who know what they are doing and do not want to constantly sync some files. Please let me work in my locations and treat me like an adult, if I am one. Make a double warning if you have to, but let us remove somethings from syncing.

Just to add my weight to this, I do professional Video and Audio editing and absolutely want my main assets and the project files sent up, but there is little point in the preview and cache files being continuously backed up every time they are regenerated, which is every few minutes. It eats up bandwidth and CPU, so being able to exclude the 'preview' directories would be fantastic.

It would also enable me to keep OneDrive on while working while on the move, as the smaller project file would be sent up while working from the train, for example, without worrying about using data on uploading very large preview video files. .

Unbelievable OneDrive doesn't allow this simple thing. How hard is to implement it? It has been like 3 years the idea was proposed.!! It's a nightmare to keep Angular projects in OneDrive, because as soon as the project was started, node_module folder is being synced, wasting bandwidth and time. So please prioritize this.

Lightroom's preview files are under it's folder as well. Would be a godsend to exclude those (400k files each mapping to a photo which is also on onedrive). Pretty dumb I can't move them to a different location on Adobe's part, but also pretty dumb that OneDrive can't exclude that folder in 2020!

The OneDrive process goes absolutely nuts whenever I use Lightroom. I shouldn't be able to notice OneDrive given the hardware I'm using.

This would be an amazing feature and would entice me to purchase office 365. The way it is right now doesn't suit my needs, as files that are too large are being automatically be uploaded so certain programs can run properly.